


A sickness in your soul

by Baryshnikov



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Cannibalistic Thoughts, Death, Dissociation, Experimental Style, Hallucinations, Hearing Voices, Horror, Insanity, M/M, Psychological Horror, Psychosis, Snakes, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence, questioning identity, this is NOT pleasant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-09 19:17:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16455764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baryshnikov/pseuds/Baryshnikov
Summary: The voices said he was fine, and that was all that mattered, wasn't it?





	A sickness in your soul

Draco couldn’t forget when he first heard the voices.  
Unsure for the first time in his life whether the world he was living in, was real or not. He heard them shouting and talking and whispering and shrieking incessantly, sometimes it was a mass of noise, a haze of words that submerged him. But sometimes it was distinct, a voice that felt so familiar, murmuring to him, reminding him of things that weren’t true but felt so true when they said them. It was obvious the others weren’t hearing these messengers, so he pretended he couldn’t either. No one would know if he didn’t tell them. They were his secrets, his decorated angels that sung a perfume song only he could hear. They were the ones who told him not to worry as the wallpaper peeled, not to worry as the walls dissolved around him, not to worry when he saw monsters lurking the corners, not to worry when he stared at himself from across the room. They told him not to worry and he didn’t. 

 

But the voices said there was nothing wrong with him, and he believed them. 

 

He tried to hide from Harry and his knowing eyes, but Harry always found him. 

Harry whose face was the only solid in a liquid world. 

Draco remembered opening his eyes and having no idea where he was until he’d seen Harry’s concerned eyes looking at him. Then he’d smiled, looking at Harry in the way he liked to be looked at: with longing and want and hunger. He started to look to Harry more when the world was melting like candlewax, Harry was a constant, a solid stream of ice, always cold, and always there. Harry was security, a sanctuary, a safe haven where the voices could not hurt him. 

 

He was perfect, that was what everyone said.

And perfect people didn’t have problems. 

 

Draco couldn’t forget when he first started to see the snakes.  
Coiling around the chairs and slithering along the tables, even streaming out of the tap, a glistening snake with a cold forked tongue that licked his hands clean. Black and white and green, wrapping around everyone’s necks and sliding from their mouths. He could feel their scales slinking across his skin, wrapping around his own neck. They were beautiful in their own way and he could hear them talking, always hissing, an endless drone in the background. It gave him a headache. But it also made him more careful, no one else saw these things, and if they knew he did, they would mistake that something was wrong. There was nothing wrong, he was just special, gifted with seeing what other, weaker beings, could not.

 

But the voices said there was nothing wrong with him, and he believed them.

 

He tried to hide from Harry and his knowing eyes, but Harry always found him. 

Harry whose warm hands touched his arm.

Draco remembered listening to Harry’s confused words, a mixture of hissing and purring and other sounds he didn’t understand. They were dampened by the fog that encircled his mind and tangled in his brain. So, he just smiled at whatever Harry was saying. Smiled and placed his hand on Harry’s waist, to make Harry forget that he wasn’t talking. Make Harry stumble over his words. Make Harry forget that there was anything different about him, because if Harry was too busy thinking about his smile then he wasn’t thinking of all the things that didn’t make sense. Not that inconsistencies meant anything, of course, just because he was getting enmeshed in his own mind, it didn’t mean reality was disintegrating around him. 

 

He was perfect, that was what everyone said. 

And perfect people didn’t have problems. 

 

Draco couldn’t forget feeling like he was choking, drowning in the ceaseless oxygen.  
He was watching himself die over and over again. Face so pale, hands so weak, such a frail mortal. He’d felt sick and cold and shaky and nothing like himself. He didn’t feel like anyone, just a mass of flesh and bone sewn together and cast into the world with a million identical others. He watched as the flesh on his fingers liquified, and dripped onto the floor, watched himself decompose, watched everyone decompose. Rotting in their breathing state, decaying and dying. Falling to the floor as disfigured cadavers he wanted to slide his fingers through. They were all nothing more than breathing corpses, wandering without purpose in a dead world, waiting to die, waiting for death to feast on their flesh, and maggots to writhe in their hearts. But that was the truth, wasn’t it? That was the reality in all its horror. For the first time he could see what the raw world looked like without its sheen of glamour; just the brutal skeleton that lurked beneath them all. 

 

But the voices said there was nothing wrong with him, and he believed them.

 

He tried to hide from Harry and his knowing eyes, but Harry always found him. 

Harry whose smile was different now to what it had been. 

Draco remembered realising there was something else between them, though neither of them knew what it was yet. Harry was different, smiling with his golden tongue and diamond eyes, speaking words Draco didn’t understand. He could see himself as he nodded to words he didn’t hear, could see how Harry was looking at him strangely, curious but not worried, only intrigued, and if Harry was intrigued then that was a good thing. It meant that the things that prowled in his mind were not spilling into reality. 

 

He was perfect, that was what everyone said. 

And perfect people didn’t have problems. 

 

Draco couldn’t forget when the blood started oozing down the walls, pooling on the floors and being smeared into the carpets by other people’s feet.  
He saw incisions that weren’t there, lacerations on everybody, red gashes on their throats and when he looked down at his hands, they were stained with that same red. He could see the blood everywhere and could smell it on everyone. It made him sick. Once he had been, spilling the contents on his stomach in the second-floor bathroom. He’d stayed there for a while hands against the porcelain, breathing heavily and trying to understand. When he’d opened his eyes, he’d seen a sight that made him retch again. Red streaked with chunks of flesh, bloodied shards of organs: the mauled remanence of a heart and the tips of fingers, flesh frayed at the edges. He’d stayed crouched against the tiles waiting for the world to stop spinning, waiting for him to stop shaking. The voices forever contradicting each other, confusing him. He knew it wasn’t real, that it couldn’t be real, and yet they told him it was real, and they were never wrong. He’d watched as his body stood up, walking to the sink, and looking at himself in the mirror. He’d felt his own hands as they held onto the sink, coating the white with red fingerprints, and he’d told himself that this wasn’t normal. 

 

But the voices said there was nothing wrong with him, and he believed them.

 

He tried to hide from Harry and his knowing eyes, but Harry always found him. 

Harry whose face was filled with fear.

Draco remembered when he had come in and for a moment looked alarmed. Staring at him with his hair hanging in his eyes and his sweat-soaked shirt and his shaking hands. He remembered panicking, scared that Harry would know his secret, that he would lose that connection with the divine he so loved and so loathed. So, he’d pushed him against the wall and kissed him, to stop him seeing that the world was coming undone. Hands at his buttons, trying to remember whether this was what people did when they felt things they couldn’t express with words. To his relief, Harry had kissed him back, fingers pulling at his tie and his robes and his shirt, convincing him that this was a good thing. Convincing him that even if he saw blood seeping from Harry’s mouth everything was fine.

 

He was perfect, that was what everyone said. 

And perfect people didn’t have problems. 

 

Draco couldn’t forget bodies on bodies, another’s skin dragging across his own, another’s mouth trailing down his body until he was crying out.  
He couldn’t remember Harry’s face though, it could have been anyone’s head between his thighs. Their face was blurred in his memory, nothing but a pink gash across their pale skin and endless darkness where their eyes should be. Fingers had pulled his hair, knitting themselves through it, pushing him onto his front. The world was spinning, colours merging together, forming a behemoth that stood in the corner of the room, watching, always watching. Despite the world revolving and the colours scattering like a blood splatter across the walls, he felt every sensation of his body with a devasting clarity. The scratch of a fingernail along his spine, hands gripping his shoulders. Two bodies rocking as one, nails digging into his skin, mouth against his neck, a voice, the one grounding thing in his gyrating world. Arms outstretched, neck twisting to kiss that unknown mouth. Lying on his front being fucked by a ghost made him feel so dead, nothing more than a body, a piece of meat being used however that ghost wanted to use him. But he also felt alive, a creature experiencing life with more understanding than anyone else in the whole world. He lay staring at the swirling walls, watching as the world crumbled, leaving nothing but Harry murmuring, another voice inside his head, another creature showing him a light he never would have found alone. He knew then that he didn’t know who he was anymore, that he wasn’t who he had always thought he was.

 

But the voices said there was nothing wrong with him, and he believed them.

 

He tried to hide from Harry and his knowing eyes, but Harry always found him. 

Harry whose hands held him in the morning light. 

Draco remembered him talking to him as they looked into each other’s eyes, asking if he was really fine. He smiled. Harry always asked unnecessary questions. He said he was fine, if anything, he was better than fine, dancing on heaven’s clouds with an insight that no one else had. He had visions and deific dreams, and a connection to God, if only Harry could see that. But Harry only nodded and squeezed his hand a little tighter

 

He was perfect, that was what everyone said. 

And perfect people didn’t have problems. 

 

Draco couldn’t forget the darkness.  
Standing on the edge of the window looking down at the abyss, the voices in his head telling him to jump and find out whether he really was immortal. He stood there until his hands were numb and his eyes were aching. The nadirs of humanity looked so inviting to bathe in, so inviting to dive into. He wanted to swim in the blackness of that abyss, plunge into the void and find out what was beyond the confines of a corporeal existence. It was so tempting. Afterall it wasn’t really that dark, there was a light somewhere in the depths, and all there was up here was grey. Just an endless expanse of grey, so tasteless and bland to his eyes, would it be so wrong if he just – fell. The voices didn’t think so. A tiny part of him thought that was probably a bad thing.

 

But the voices said there was nothing wrong with him, and he believed them.

 

He tried to hide from Harry and his knowing eyes, but Harry always found him. 

Harry whose hands steadied him.

Draco remembered him telling him to get down, and as the voices receded and he could feel his hands again, he turned to face that ghost. Harry was scared. It was written across his twisted face, an open letter to the world. There was no reason to be scared, he had everything they had ever wanted, more than they had ever anticipated. Perhaps he didn’t recognise himself anymore, but was that really a problem, when he had the world in his hands? 

 

He was perfect, that was what everyone said.

And perfect people didn’t have problems, did they?

**Author's Note:**

> This is my slightly more disturbing Halloween fic.
> 
> This went through so many pairing changes before it found the right one, so sorry if the characterisation is awful.


End file.
